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Wednesday, 26 February 2014

Tonight's event at People's Co-op has been postponed to end of March, new promos will arise once all has been confirmed.

Happy to note that the wonderful David Campbell has been selected to be honoured this year for longstanding contributions to the arts: alas this gathering will unfold at the same time and day that another elder will be honoured, Reconciliation Through Poetry event @ VPL.

Pandora's Collective PresentsTWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON

Please mark your calendars for Thursday February 27th when we host a special Twisted Poets night with an honouring of our fellow poet and friend David Campbell. This celebration will show case David’s many talents as a visual artist, a writer and a singer-songer writer. More details to come. Note there will be cake!!! No open mic this night but there will be time if you have a story to share about David for those who aren't scheduled.

“Every so often you meet someone in life who stuns you with his brilliance, humility and kindness. David Campbell is one such soul. I first met David over 10 years ago at a Twisted Poets event. Back then he would play his magic as well as read. David is an accomplished singer/song writer born in Guyana, South America, and is of Arawak Indian and Portuguese ancestry. He had his first break in the UK with a recording contract. He later moved to Canada where he decided he was happier producing his own work and having control over his art and life. He has toured, and appeared on radio and television in several countries and has 300 videos and counting, on YouTube, mainly of original songs. Besides being an accomplished musician, David is a prolific writer and visual artist. His work often brings us back to his first nations roots and speaks of his homeland, world issues, relationships and spirituality. David brings to all his work the kind of touching humanity that reaches us all. He is a deep dear soul who once having touched you with his heart, stays with you forever. David is the recipient of the World Poetry Life Time Achievement Award (2004). These are just a few of the reasons we will be honouring David on February 27th 7-9:30 pm at Twisted Poets at the Cottage Bistro. I hope you will come out to share in an evening that should be full. David will read, others will toast and there will be cake.

by Juan Guillermo Sanchez M.

Is a multi-lingual book (English/Spanish/Native language/s) gathering, in turn, wisdom, thoughts, verses, short-stories, poems, and general reflections on the various local issues pertaining to Water. This Anthology represents the collective ideas of worldwide indigenous peoples, leaders, elders, poets, writers, and activists, about Water.

Is an intercultural dialogue between East/West/North/South indigenous elders, activists and writers.

Is a pedagogical tool to create awareness about Water around the world.

Invites readers to offer their own words to Water in a symbolic gesture to protect and honor it.

Summary: This documentary shares the stories of Indian Residential School survivors and details the importance that this work continues though the work of Reconciliation Canada. It also details the path that many non-Indigenous Canadians face on their journey to discovering this part of Canadian history. By telling the story of Chief Robert Joseph, this documentary works to mend misunderstandings, and encourages building new relationships built on shared understandings.

Jordan Abel -- Place of Scraps

launch (Vancouver, October 2013)

Poet Jordan Abel launched his first book of poetry, The Place of Scraps (Talonbooks, 2013), at the Western Front in Vancouver, BC, on October 10, 2013. Daniel Zomparelli, Talon poet and editor-in-chief of Poetry is Dead magazine, emceed the event, which was a co-launch with the Sound issue of Poetry is Dead. Armed only with his wits, his dulcet tones, and his loop station, Abel read two long atmospheric poems from The Place of Scraps.

Sunday, 16 February 2014

Thinking about these things, my mind drifted to racialization and the similarly shifting sands of identity, the inside-outside repercussions and reverbs, and how we all need to find a place to stand, to be ourselves, to be comfortable within our own skins, to participate in a world or communities in mutually nourishing ways, and to create a life we want to be at the center of.

In a world where oppression and discrimination are measurables, realities, whilst we build alliances against murder/war and toward individual and collective flourishing, we also develop methods of coping that either harm us, or support our solidification into self-confident participants, or of course a bit of both: click to see full chart.

While there are good hearted and thoughtful people creating charts of what they are thinking about, there is also a lot of junk out there. Here's one comparative chart from the local paper:

This one, which appears to be a series of heat maps, actually measures individual's self-perceptions, how specific participants represented emotions with crayons:

Moving through crises with increasing finesse, accepting our non-binary worlds with oceanic generosity, learning to trust the waters of self. Fluidity is the norm, it is the ideological mapping that requires endless tweaking.

Saturday, 15 February 2014

Transgender Dysphoria Blues doesn’t reinvent Against Me! – it crystallizes everything that the band has grown to be over the past decade. But there’s something incredibly cathartic about getting to hear Laura Jane Grace (formerly known as Tom Gabel) sing about what she’s been singing around for years. All the subtext buried in the band’s back catalog, all the tension that comes with living invisibly female in an androcentric industry and a transphobic society, it’s all finally laid bare."

If I could have chosen I would have been born a woman / My mother once told me she would have named me Laura / I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her / One day I'd find an honest man to make my husband

Gabel says he thought he was "completely outing himself" with a lyric like that. He expected to be confronted – a part of him even craved it. But if anyone suspected anything, no one brought it up. "When we did that song, I was like, 'What is that about?'" says Butch Vig, who produced Against Me!'s last two albums. "He just kind of laughed it off. He said, 'I was stoned and dreaming about what life can be.'"

"I must have listened to him sing that song 500 times," adds the band's manager, Jordan Kleeman. "And I never thought twice.""

A short segment of the interview with Sahika Caglar, Turkish artist and teacher where she talks about the state of love in painting and in the Sema of the whirling dervishes. Shared by: Parisa Soultani Co-producer/Web host of the One Through Loveproject.

"ONE THROUGH LOVE brings together a growing, international group of knowledgeable Rumi “Lovers”. We invite you to experience Rumi’s poetry and teachings through the multi-lingual film clips on this cinematic website. "

A Poetry Map of Canada, the brainchild of recent Edmonton Poet Laureate Anna Marie Sewell, is comprised of two half-hour presentations of the works of a spectrum of Poet Laureates of Canada. The first video opens with the Makar of Glasgow, Scotland, Liz Lochhead, and then a fast-paced east-to-west presentation of poet laureates of Canada, ending with the recent Parliamentary Poet of Canada, Fred Wah. The pace is good, the poetry fine, swift, brief."Act II" or "Part 2" is a synthesized representation of the works of the poets laureate, performed in three voices, with soundscape. This is a satisfying tapestry of works and styles, delivered with panache.

- An Evening with the Poets Laureate of Canada

- An Evening with the Poets Laureate of Canada

IN THIS ONLINE ANTHOLOGY, 21 poets are showcased in discrete short videos of about five minutes each. The collection is curated by Fred Wah, Parliamentary Poet Laureate 2011-2013. It is available on the Parliament of Canada website in association with his pages: at the moment the youtube links are not aligned with the current locations on that site, no doubt the corrections will come along soon.

Whereas the poets laureates showcased above each hold a public post in a poetry-friendly city or region, this collection was chosen for a range of compositional approaches, and that is it's core strength as a teaching tool. Beyond the public face of poets laureate, there are a wild diversity of working poets who have mind-bendingly different conceptions and motives, in the creation or generation of poetry. These short films serve as an introduction, with a variety of places of poetry keeping the series fresh and unexpected, both visually and in content. Here are two:

Another of the strengths of this anthology is that it is available as text in both official languages (English and French), in addition to the video format published online. In some cases, how it looks and how it sounds are utterly distinct: the tensions between orality and textuality are resolved differently by different poets, just as the sensuality versus intellection quotients vary widely.

Besides the availability of the poems and brief biographies of the poets, there are discussion points and writing directions for each, prepared by contemporary poets and teachers, that assist the reader in delving a little deeper into the specific poem, the school or approach, and in trying one's hand: this is a great asset for those looking to learn about poetry, or to refresh and renew an ongoing poetry engagement.

“One of my projects as Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate is to produce a series of short videos to help make contemporary Canadian poetry more accessible. These recordings illustrate a range of poetry that reflects the identity, places and modes of poetic writing in Canada.” – Fred Wah

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

Daniel Heath Justice will give a public lecture entitled "Why Indigenous Literature Matters" to consider the relevance of reading works by Aboriginal writers in an age of Idle No More. Daniel Heath Justice is a Cherokee scholar,fantasy writer and a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture at the University of British Columbia. This talk is the first of several public events as part of a weekend workshop at SFU, "Approaching Indigenous Literatures in the 21st Century"; it is also part of the SFU Vancity Office for Community Engagement Lecture Series on Aboriginal Issues.

Come join us in an introduction to the literature of the North in its many versions: listen to a public lecture “On the Hunting and Harvesting of Inuit Literatures” by Dr. Keavy Martin, Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, and one of Canada’s leading experts on Inuit literature; view Inhabit Media’s award winning short filmAmaqqut Nunaat: Country of Wolves; be the first to be introduced to Sanaaq, the first novel written in Inuktitut, recently translated into English and released by the University of Manitoba Press. The evening is capped with the delightful antics of Raven’s Radio Comedy Hourout of Alaska—a spoof of 40s style radio shows, which blends traditional Alaskan Native stories with song, dance and comedy, written and performed by Ed Bourgeois and Jack Dalton. This evening is organized as part of the Talking Stick Festival.

Imagine combining the alternative universes of speculative futures and the histories of First Peoples! Dr. Grace L. Dillon, Anishinaabe scholar, Associate Professor at Portland State University and Editor of the acclaimed anthology, Walking The Clouds, will give a key-note lecture on a burgeoning field of Indigenous Science Fiction.

Between October 2010 and May 2013, Queen’s University’s Sam McKegney conducted interviews with leading Indigenous artists, critics, activists, and elders on the subject of Indigenous manhood. In offices, kitchens, and coffee shops, and once in a car driving down the 401, McKegney and his participants tackled crucial questions about masculine self-worth and how to foster balanced and empowered gender relations.

Masculindianscaptures twenty of these conversations in a volume that is intensely personal, yet speaks across generations, geography, and gender boundaries. (read more).